Sovereignty or Fake Individualism?

William R. Collier Jr. THE AMERICAN FREDOMIST

Do you think you are self sufficient? Chances are, you do, but chances also are that you are worried about the moral state of our nation, you are concerned about the future, and perhaps you also feel that you are too busy. Other issues may include struggling with finances, trying to make friends, searching for meaning and purpose in life, feeling skeptical and cynical, and perhaps even some form of addiction.

Being self sufficient is another way of saying being sovereign: to be sovereign means that you are in control and that you are neither dependent on others nor vulnerable to coercion from others who may want to control you.

Are you truly sovereign?

If you are worried and concerned about the moral state of this nation and about the future try to understand why you have such concerns.

Are you worried about the moral state of Russia or Germany or France?

You are probably not worried about these countries, although you may care about them and their people.

Why are you not worried about the moral state of these nations?

The answer is simple: you are not directly effected by the moral state of their culture and society. Your children do not go to their schools or listen to their music or watch their TV shows and you do not have to worry about their laws.

You worry about the moral state of this nation and about the future of this nation because you are effected by it. To put it another way: this present cultural, economic, and political system is our primary source for some basic necessities in terms of what Maslov called “the hierarchy of needs”.

Everything from legal protection and food to entertainment and education comes to you mostly from a large scale cultural, economic, and political system that is controlled from the top by a few power brokers and has the ability to coerce you and otherwise make it difficult for you to go against the flow in terms of what these systems say is good or bad.

Take a second to let this sink in. You THINK you are self sufficient but, in reality, your concern for the moral state of this nation and the future of this nation indicates that, in reality, you are an isolated individual who depends on this system and who will mostly be forced to play by its rules, even if those rules violate your sense of justice, moral values, or your self interest.

Have you ever heard of the phrase “divide and conquer?”

You have been told that it’s all about you: follow what makes you happy, don’t let people control you, don’t let people take advantage of you, all you need is the hero inside, and the like. This is a form of individualism that is strange because it actually ends up costing you your individual identity.

Your identity is not just who you are in terms of your likes, style, personality, and behavior, it is also who others see you as, how they affirm and nurture you, giving you acceptance and love. Do you realize that acceptance and feeling as if you are making a difference are human needs that are extremely important to have filled?

You cannot JUST accept yourself, you need to experience the acceptance of others. You cannot handle all your problems and issues, or even meet all your needs, on your own. You do need other people.

If we did not need anybody except ourselves then the government could disappear and we could shut down all of society, but no matter how much we buy into a warped version of individualism, we recognize, deep down, that we need other people and so we try and full that need.

In our effort to fulfill the need for acceptance and self identity we have forgotten that the basic need for acceptance and self identity comes from relationships that we at least have an equal say about in terms of the rules, norms, and structure, and not from large scale relationships in which we are an insignificant individuals among millions of others with a few people making the rules for their benefit. We seem to be afraid of committing to one another on a personal level, we seem to be afraid that we will be taken advantage of, but despite all this we do take risks, we do make commitments, often against our will, and we are taken advantage of.

Do you want to understand how to be sovereign?

Let this sink in to you head as you answer this question: who is more sovereign the person who gets most of their needs met within a group of likeminded people that is small (around 500 or less families) in which they are an equal partner or owner in some way or the person who thinks they are self sufficient but who gets most of their needs met within a large group of people who are not of a like mind (over 100 million families) in which they are but one of millions of voices where the rules are set by a very few people at the top?

The practical work of becoming a sovereign individual is to start by making a commitment to take risks and make sacrifices within a groups of people who share your values, accept you, and respect your opinion and interests on an equal footing as their own opinions and interests.

This is not collectivism or communalism where the “good of the group” is all that matters, this is a human scale self-organization of sovereign individuals whose individual needs, aspirations, and interests are served by their association with one another.

I will be writing more about this subject in this blog, but for now, consider the idea that we need “sovereign associations” at the local level that serve the interests of EACH individual member and create a system in which the individual is truly sovereign and is limited only by their talent ambition, and work ethic.

Once you agree that, yes, such human scale sovereign associations would be good then we can talk about how it is in fact possible to create them if we are willing to pour our energy, time, money, and resources into them. Another way of saying this would be to say that we need to set aside, if for a short period of time, our own individual plans and dreams to create these local sovereign associations (Sovereignty Unions) as a means of providing ourselves with a support infrastructure that will propel our dreams and goals forward.

We are far more likely to succeed through human scale sovereign associations then through a massive scale social order that is not even deigned with us in mind.

Bill Collier

Freedomist

For More Information go to www.sovereigntyunion.org

This entry was posted on 18. August 2008 at 22:44 and is filed under Freedom News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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